It’s that time again! I’m off for another open-ended travel stint with only two things on the schedule: volunteering in Indonesia straight off the bat and running amok at the World Cup in South Africa in June, 2010. Other than that, plans are very loose. I have no must-sees, no onward plane tickets, no accommodation booked and no plans to make plans.
I’m not sure what the internet situation is in the village I’m heading to in Indonesia but early reports point to bad. That means I could be taking a break from the internet for awhile. In my volunteering experiences i Bangladesh and Haiti I realised that, even though I had decent net connections, being exhausted after each day meant that I didn’t spend much time working. Plus there are always lots of interesting people around and the last thing I will want to do is spend my time staring at my computer.
I’m really happy with the amount of work I’ve put in over the past 10 weeks I’ve been home. I think I’ve done more work in this two and a half months than I have in the past two years! No kidding. I know that things don’t fall apart when I’m away from the internet for a couple of weeks at a time… now it’s time to see what happens when I’m away for a month. I have neglected my sites before without disastrous results so I’m hoping this time around things are no different.
Indonesian visas are good for 30 days and then I need to leave and return to get another one. The idea is to leave the country and spend this time somewhere nice in Malaysia glued to my computer to catch up on things. Sort of a 30 days off, 5 days on kind of arrangement. I really like short, focused work stints and I think this could work well for me. I won’t be spending much money in Indonesia so that takes a bit of the pressure off as well.
I can’t wait to get to Indo. This is the type of travelling that really gets me excited and I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and getting my hands dirty again. I’m not so looking forward to bucket showers, squat toilets, mysterious food and a lack of ice cream but the good by far outweighs the bad. Replies to emails will be a bit slow and posts on this blog might be few and far between because, for the next 30 days, I’m on vacation!
Have any of you ever spent long stints away from the internet? Has it effected your earnings or do things just keep rolling along as normal?
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